Roger Belanger, Director, GossRSVP, LLC has it just right about interactive print

The common wisdom is that sales are motivated by fear and greed. In my experience, for a going enterprise, decisions are made in the service of managing risk, or what might be more clearly referred to as fear.

Now that newspaper management is more afraid of losing control - through a bankruptcy or a buy out - the time may finally be right for them to get over the legitimate competing fear that "the emperor has no clothes. "

Roger Belanger, Goss RSVP clarifies the situation in much more palatable language.

From the Goss RSVP blog:

We see two main factors that continue to hold back the growth of interactive print. The first I believe is a myth and the second an opportunity.

First we continue to see reluctances by publishers, especially newspapers, wanting to allow metrics to be part of their offering. They seem scared they will loose advertisers or advertisers will be able to leverage the cost they pay for an ad if their ad only gets a few hits in a given print publication. Though one would like to say print metrics and page views are one in the same they are not. Just like on the internet, there are millions of pages that get seen everyday, but not clicked on. But the ones that do get clicked on some metrics are provided, great!

So if print publishers can break this mind set, or myth, and separate ad sales from the fear that metrics will erode sales, we believe then interactive print technology will really take off.

Secondly, publishing & editorial tools do not have interactive features as part of their front end offerings, thus making it a bit more expensive & cumbersome to add after the fact. This is mainly a technology issue, but more importantly an opportunity for the print publishing industry to capitalize